That is very strange, cause I get the same results on two systems now. When you press Alt-backtick, make sure you hold Alt key for about 2 seconds, then hold backtick (`).

Also another way to see the key press is by doing:

Alt-Tab, continue holding Alt key, release Tab, then press Backtick key. You will see that the switcher response by replacing the application icon in the switcher, with a preview of the application window.

From my testing, there is no way to disable the shortcuts. Part of the bug is that the key combination box will show "Disabled" but actually the default key combination is still set, IT IS NOT DISABLED.

Since you can't disable it, you can re-map it. So what I did was remap "Key to flip through windows in the switcher" to Alt-Shift-Super-A, so it will not bother me anymore.

Also wanted to add that you can disable keyboard shortcut after you remap it and it will not bother anymore. Not sure through if it's the fault of keys chosen for shortcut or some bug that shows this as disabled even though it's enabled.

The Alt-Grave shortcut is captured by Unity and cannot be removed from the System Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts dialog or the Unity Tweak Tool. This prevents other applications from using the shortcut (RubyMine, for example).

I've found on 14.10, if you enable the shortcut in CCSM and then disable it, that effectively disables it. However, I've also found each distro release re-enables this annoying shortcut, even if it's marked as disabled.

This speaks to underlying issues in the Compiz keyboard shortcuts system, or in how Ubuntu is deploying the unity prefs. Something here isn't respecting user prefs on upgrade, and isn't correctly representing the current settings in the settings interface.

-open up a terminal run dconf-editor
-then navigate to org > gnome > desktop > wm > keybindings
-find the ['<Super>Above_Tab', '<Alt>Above_Tab']
-and set it to ['disabled']
-then it should free up that binding for you to use else where.

is there viable workaround? I am tired of dropping "Key to flip through windows in the switcher" to some new value each time system restarts. I use Guake console and bind it to "Alt+Grave" but this hotkey is acquired by damn Switcher each time system restarts no matter how it is configured. I mean, even when I explicitly set another hotkey to the action "Key to flip through windows in the switcher" it binds "Alt+Grave" after reboot. Since I use static application switcher it would be fine to just disable this default unity switcher, but I can not find how. This bug bothers me for several years already, please, give me some workaround.

I do not think that it is a duplicate of bug #1113420, it looks like, but it is not. Alt+grave can be reassigned. But it simply does not work. This looks like the bug in the unity Switcher which simply ignores its configuration settings at startup.